History
Union Institute & University traces its origins to 1964, when a group of ten liberal arts colleges established The Union for Research and Experimentation in Higher Education. The consortium, headquartered at the campus of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, included a number of schools experimenting with alternative education philosophies during the period, including Antioch; Sarah Lawrence College; Bard College; Hofstra University; Goddard College; Franconia College; and Nasson College. Renamed The Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities in 1969, The Union directed its focus toward providing educational opportunities for non-traditional students whose needs were best served by a low-residency college experience, as well as those students who sought to conduct socially relevant research in an interdisciplinary manner.
The consortium provided administrative support for a number of programs run by its member schools under the title The University Without Walls. It also formed a graduate school called The Union Graduate School, which offered a Ph.D. in Arts and Sciences. The consortium filed for bankruptcy in 1978. Emerging from its bankruptcy, the institution renamed itself The Union Institute in 1986. As the Union Institute, the school continued to operate its graduate school. After acquiring Vermont College in Montpelier, Vermont from Norwich University in October, 2001, it was renamed Union Institute & University. The purchase of Vermont College added several Master’s degree programs and an Adult Degree Program to Union Institute & University’s existing undergraduate and doctoral programs. This enabled The Union to provide a progression of degree opportunities, along with certificates in advanced graduate study. Since its inception in the 1960s, The Union has a continuing emphasis on social relevance and interdisciplinary programs.
The Union Institute & University's Ph.D. program came under scrutiny by the Ohio Board of Regents in the late 1990s early 2000s, which scrutiny culminated in its 2002 Reauthorization Report. The report was critical of the Union Institute's Ph.D. program, noting in particular that " ... expectations for student scholarship at the doctoral level were not as rigorous as is common for doctoral work ... " (OBR 2002 Reauthorization Report, page 13). The Union Graduate School was dissolved and the Ph.D. program was restructured. Formerly it had been a Ph.D. in Arts and Sciences. A new Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies in good standing was established, and the former Ph.D. in Arts and Sciences is no longer accepting students. The new program offers three areas of concentration.
In 2002, Roger H. Sublett became Union Institute & University’s fifth president. Under Sublett, who was director of the Kellogg Foundation from 1991–2001, Union has undergone major academic and structural changes to respond to the issues identified during its reauthorization process.
Read more about this topic: Union Institute & University
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)